


this early light

by ignipes



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-20
Updated: 2009-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amanda knows where Earth is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this early light

Before dawn the sky is soft and pink, a shy blush washing away the stars. At this hour the desert's labyrinth of jagged ridges and shadowed canyons seems gentler than it does in the full light of day.

The door slides open and Amanda steps out. The morning air is crisp, the stones cool beneath her feet. Soon the sun will rise and the red desert will shimmer with heat again. Amanda savors these quiet moments of receding darkness. She feels lighter in the morning - "But the gravitational acceleration of Vulcan has no diurnal variation," Sarek would say, his face expressionless but his eyes glinting with amusement - and she imagines the air is easier to breath.

Amanda leans on the railing and watches the stars fade. She knows where Earth is, where the Sun shines pale and unremarkable amongst stars with unfamiliar names. Sarek had shown her on her very first night on Vulcan, carefully pointing out the stars she could use to find the Sun again.

She had not been homesick or lonely: she was newly married and thrilled by everything she had seen of Vulcan in one whirlwind day, the beautiful cities and towering architecture, the vast mountains and spires of rock and ruddy seas caught in basins. When night fell she was giddy with exhaustion and babbling her excitement, and Sarek placed a hand on her arm and said, "There is your Sun. It is sixteen point one two light years away."

At the time she had wondered why he chose that moment to show her. She doesn't wonder anymore.

She rolls her shoulders tiredly and smiles around a stifled yawn. Her newborn son may be half-Vulcan, but he screams through the night with all the righteous fury of a human infant. Perhaps more. In her messages from Earth Amanda's mother keeps hinting that Spock ought to be sleeping through the night by now, and do those Vulcan physicians really know what they're doing?

Amanda doesn't tell her mother that she'll let her son cry as long as he wants, as loud as he wants. She doesn't want to admit that she worries there will be a day she'll long to see him feel so much.

The last of the stars are gone, and the sky is lighter. Already Amanda can feel the breeze growing warmer.

Amanda knows where Earth is. But her husband and her son are inside, and soon the day will be upon them. She hums to herself as she turns to go back inside.


End file.
